


Cigarettes and Churches

by Infy



Category: Caduceus | Trauma Center Series, Trauma Team
Genre: Gen, light shipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-16 19:13:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3499748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Infy/pseuds/Infy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Muller saw her there first thing after the operation. She had been an excellent support as usual, but there was something about her when she was out here at the breezeway, like she was one time a month like clockwork, that worried him. It wasn’t in the way she put the cigarette, lit, between her lips and seemed to sigh every time she took a drag from it, but it was in the way that she seemed like she’d rather be anywhere but there. As a general surgeon, Erhard was trained to observe, and at the time he was quite unsure whether it would have been as obvious to anyone else as it was to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cigarettes and Churches

Dr. Muller saw her there first thing after the operation. She had been an excellent support as usual, but there was something about her when she was out here at the breezeway, like she was one time a month like clockwork, that worried him. It wasn’t in the way she put the cigarette, lit, between her lips and seemed to sigh every time she took a drag from it, but it was in the way that she seemed like she’d rather be anywhere but there. As a general surgeon, Erhard was trained to observe, and at the time he was quite unsure whether it would have been as obvious to anyone else as it was to him.

 

Or it could be, perhaps, that Erhard had always found himself drawn to the fire exuded by Dr. Maria Torres, and this was the only time that she ever seemed to smolder away into ashes not unlike the ones she tapped off the end of her cigarette. She seemed listless, lost in thought, enough that she’d probably never notice him attempting to approach her.

He was correct in his assumption. She turned and raised a startled brow when she noticed him standing there. “Hey, how long have you been there?” Her words were mumbled. He couldn’t gauge whether she actually cared that he was in the vicinity or not.

His cell never was conducive to the development of strong social skills, so unfortunately, Erhard couldn’t manage to say anything beyond “Why do you do that?” motioning with his head to the lit cigarette between her fingers.

She responded with a simple sigh upon tracing his eyes to her hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

“You realize what that does to your lungs, I assume.” Dumb question, he soon realized, and Dr. Muller prepared for the response.

“I have a degree, you know. I went to med school.” A raise of her eyebrow and a cross of her arms, and the surgeon she was responding to attempted not to wince, expecting her to punch him in the shoulder with the same accidentally massive amount of force that she usually does. But she only continued. “As in, if I were to write a book the author would be Maria Torres, MD. As in like… licensed and practicing surgeon. I’m aware.”

“Fair enough,” Dr. Muller stated simply, unsure how to respond to Dr. Torres’s uncharacteristically deadpan tone of voice, before a long silence hung between them, the only sounds being the chirping of the birds and the hum of generators and air conditioners outside Resurgam. “I suppose that’s why it’s so curious to me, then,” Erhard finally broke the silence, and the smooth sound of his voice turned Maria’s head. “Forgive me if I’m prying.”

“I guess there’s no reason for me to hide it. I’m trying to quit.”

Erhard shifted, leaning against the light pole near the breezeway and crossing his arms, genuinely intrigued.

“Yeah,” continued Dr. Torres, her eyes shutting as she took a deep breath, having realized there was no way that Dr. Muller would let it go until he got a legitimate answer. “Been doing it for a while. Since I was a kid.” She took another drag, the smoke passing her lips and then delicately floating away until it was almost invisible. The both of them took a slight comfort in watching the wisps of smoke in their quiet dance, punctuated by the rays of the setting sun. It was a brief moment before either of them spoke again. “The story’s dumb. And long. You don’t wanna hear about it.”

Erhard shook his head slightly, offering what little bit of a smile he could possibly manage. “They rescinded my sentence. I’m a free man and I have nowhere else to be today.” His eyes rested on hers, even though she didn’t realize that they did.

Maria’s only response came in the form of a slight scoff followed by a wistful laugh, as if the gears in her head turned even despite Erhard’s words. “You’re somethin’, kid.” She muttered, her eyes falling on the cigarette clenched between her first two fingers. Another silence pervaded, and Maria cleared her throat in her attempt to clear the awkwardness in tandem. “My mom and dad both did this from what I remember.”

“I… recall you mentioning growing up in an orphanage,” Erhard replied, his blood red eyes now fixated on a specific spot on the ground, one that he didn’t pick for any reason aside from it being away from Maria’s face—he wanted nothing less than to stare her in the face as she shot him a glare, but while he usually could feel the burn of her eyes in the back of his neck, this time it seemed less vicious. He glanced back towards her, and she was busy staring less at him and more at the sky, scanning it with the observant eyes of a doctor.

“Yeah.” The response was simple, plain, but even then it took her forever to get it out. A fourth silence, this one more chilling and pervading for Erhard than the last. “I grew up at a catholic orphanage. Right by Deering High, where I walked to school every day. Got suspended for doing this exact same thing. And then there’s the time I basically burned the friggin’ church down and almost killed Little Rose.” Another sigh from Maria, this time punctuated with a grumble as if she still felt guilty about starting the fire even way back then. “You’d think I’d learn.” She took one final drag before flicking the cigarette onto the ground with a gloved hand and stepping on it with her boot, grinding it into the pavement.

Erhard himself took a moment to formulate a response. He always found himself at a loss talking to Maria. He never could truly figure her out. Dr. Tachibana, Dr. Cunningham, Dr. Freebird, hell, even Dr. Kimishima whom he’d only known for a brief time.. he had all of them pegged. But for some reason, some reason that Erhard had no way of understanding, could not ever predict Dr. Torres. Perhaps that was what drew him to her, even today. “Classical conditioning theory states,” he finally sighed, his eyes trained back on her as she flopped down on the bench near the breezeway, “that you probably would have been conditioned not to smoke based on the various responses to it, yes.” He took a breath, thinking of nothing but his phrasing. “But there must be a reason you keep hanging onto it.”

Maria’s response came simply. “You’re a doctor.”

“Yes.”

“So then,” she sighed, leaning her head back on her hands as she crossed her legs and sank into the hard metal bench as best she could. “You know that nicotine triggers a dopamine release and eventually the body undergoes minute withdrawal symptoms even after a few hours, which explains why people get addicted.”

It seemed to Dr. Muller that Dr. Torres had forgotten he’d gone to medical school as well. Erhard, though, didn’t think much of it. “It doesn’t look that simple for you, though. I see you smoke only once in a while. Maybe once a month.” Certainly, it couldn’t possibly be simple addiction. “A habit like Dr. Cunningham’s would cause me to worry, but for now, I’m just… curious.”

Maria seemed taken aback at first, but her expression softened after a moment. “It’s…” she trailed off with a long sigh and a laugh, but a desperate laugh that only drew Erhard in more. “You caught me, I guess,” She murmured, turning her attention back to the clouds stained orange by the light from the sun on the horizon. It was growing darker by the moment. Perhaps an overnight shift couldn’t be too bad if she had someone to chat with.

Maria shifted, leaning back over and crossing her arms. “Let me tell you right now, smoking cigarettes is an improvement.” As she moved over on the bench, Erhard interpreted it as an invitation to have a seat, and he did, but he made sure to keep a comfortable distance. “It’s been a long time,” she continued, “but I was once into a lot of other things.”

Erhard couldn’t guess anything else aside from the obvious, and all he could manage to say in response after being taken so aback by that fact was “really.” Another pause, and he tried to talk more to make her feel a bit more comfortable. “I never would have guessed you—”

“Yeah,” she muttered, intentionally sparing him the awkwardness of attempting to keep a conversation going. She stared at the pack of cigarettes in her hand for a brief moment, tossing them aside on the bench next to her and not even sparing them a second glance. “See, I was born in the Bronx in a really big Mexican community, and we were all pretty tight with each other.” Erhard tilted his head, listening intently. She must have had a lot of friends who could relate to her background—so much different than here in Maine. He glanced downward at his hands, pale from both his birth and a lifetime living here. He’d never known the awkwardness of not having people around who looked exactly like him or spoke the same language. He wasn’t even sure what his cultural background was. It must have been difficult for Maria to move up here with hardly anybody like her after being around so many friends who she could relate to. And, as if she were reading Erhard’s mind, Maria continued. “When we moved to Maine, though, everybody around me was different, and the people I grew up with sorta just lost contact with us, and all I really had was my family.” She paused. “Then my dad one day just… decided to leave.” The former prisoner CR-S01 glanced upward, brow perked, attempting with no avail to read her expression. She was just… blank. No intensity, like he usually saw in her eyes. This must be painful for her.

“Did you see him go?” He muttered, as unbidden, the images of Albert Sartre and his own biological father Mr. Muller rose in his mind, and the images of them walking away from him as he held his hand out pleading for them not to leave him all alone. Dr. Muller took a breath, and Maria glanced over his way, sharing with him a knowing stare.

“Nah, I…” She sighed. “I woke up one day to see my mom crying and my abuela consoling her and I guess I just… knew.”

“I see,” murmured Erhard, “…it must have been difficult.”

Maria exhaled, and her words stopped flowing for a moment. Another silence, punctuated by the occasional “um” as Maria tried to figure out how to continue. “But…” she finally spoke, and Erhard glanced her direction. “I dunno, at least I had someone. See, back then I was a sharp kid. In the accelerated learning “gifted and talented” thing all through school and all that. But then after my abuela died, my mom started going south.” Erhard shifted, and Maria uncrossed her legs, still leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. “After papi left it was just her and me. I was an only child, and it took a toll on me too. I started being a bully in school and I started to take it out on all the other kids.” Erhard offered an understanding nod, but didn’t say anything beyond that to let her finish telling her tale. “I remember never seeing my mom without a drink in her hand, but never thinking too much about it.” She had to take a deep breath, and it wasn’t met with another word. “And then…”

Erhard finally spoke, prompted by another silence. “Take your time.” A pale hand gently rested on Maria’s shoulder. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Maria shook her head and chuckled awkwardly, as if she were trying to will away any unwanted emotions. “Nah, I just… haven’t thought about it in a while.” It took her a moment to recompose herself, but once she did, she let out a sigh and began speaking in that level, serious tone Erhard always recalled her using when she had something important to say. The old Maria was coming back, and Dr. Muller gave a slight sigh of relief mixed with intrigue. “I remember coming home from school one day when I was 8,” she continued. “It was raining, and I forgot an umbrella, so I walk in dripping wet thinking my mom would freak on me for getting the carpet all soaked… usually I came home and she had a sandwich ready for me for a snack, and she’d say “bienvenida a casa, mija” from the kitchen, and…” Maria paused a moment and turned her head to face Erhard, leaning back against the bench and draping her arms over the back of it. “You speak Spanish at all, kid?”

“Unfortunately not. French, but no Spanish.” He smiled slightly, more of an awkward shift of the corners of his lips, and added, “I know how to ask where the bathroom is, but nothing beyond that.”

Maria sighed, intermixing it with a laugh and an “oh”. She cleared her throat before speaking again. “Bienvenida a casa means “welcome home”. Mija is a term of endearment. It’s like honey or dear, stuff like that.”

“I see.”

“Anyway, I’d usually get home from school and eat and I’d do my homework, but this time she didn’t greet me so I knew something was off. So I looked…” Dr. Torres’s eyes, half-lidded, turned away from Dr. Muller, and Erhard tilted his head in curiosity. “She was just… asleep.”

Erhard’s stomach turned. Asleep, in stories like these, was never what it seemed to be. “Asleep?” he prompted, and Maria took a breath.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she sighed, and Erhard knew. “And when she wasn’t around a few hours later, I tried rousing her… but she wouldn’t get up. Turns out she was cirrhotic. Her liver failed while I was gone and she had tried to lay down and sleep it off instead of calling 911.” Erhard’s eyes widened. “It ended up causing hepatic encephalopathy. She died on our couch, and I had no idea.” Maria gritted her teeth, obviously upset with herself.

All Erhard could do was say her name and gently offer a touch to her shoulder. “Maria…”

Maria nonetheless continued her story, her body now fully facing him. Erhard leaned in, listening silently. “My mom was gone and I didn’t have anyone else, and you’d think I’d be sad about it, but… it’s disgusting, but I wasn’t. I was ticked off.” It wasn’t a circumstance where smiling would be appropriate, otherwise Erhard would have to try not to smile at how obviously Maria that was. She’d get ticked off at anything. He instead remained silent, listening with respectful intent. “I remember thinking that if it was her drinking that killed her, and if it was that bad, she obviously hid it from me, because I had no idea. So yeah, I was a pissed off little kid. And at an orphanage, you meet some other pissed off little kids. And when the pissed off little kid you start trusting hands you a cigarette or a joint or a pipe and tells you it’ll make you feel better, you don’t ask questions.”

It all honestly started to add up for him. “I see,” Erhard murmured. He glanced up to meet her eyes for the first time in a long while. “How old were you?” He asked, and Maria sighed.

“I was about ten when I had my first cigarette,” Erhard perked his brow at how low that number was. “Yeah,” Maria chuckled. “Young, right? Well, for years I went down that spiral. Tried smoking weed, that sated me for a while. Almost burnt the place down at fourteen, realized I wanted to help people, but I didn’t know how to start. By the time I was in high school I’d tried everything. Weed, coke, LSD, hell, I even did meth once on a lark.” A longer pause than normal, and finally it was punctuated by a long sigh from Maria and a quirk of her lips into a slight smile. “But then… I met a teacher at my school who set me straight. She taught biology and chemistry mostly. Had her for a couple classes, and she was… different. She saw in me something nobody else did. Thought I was the smartest kid there.” Knowing Maria, Erhard thought, she probably was. The woman’s practically a genius even now. “And honestly,” she added, “I was. I could do the stupid math and science problems easy, and I got so bored that it just pushed me farther away from the straight and narrow. But she told me she was teaching an anatomy class at Cumberland College, and she invited me to come along.”

“Did you go?”

Maria shook her head. “Not at first. She managed to get me there though, but not without me putting up a fight. But when I did get into that anatomy class, it was challenging, yeah, but… it was fun, too. I realized that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And I told her that. I’ll never forget what she said. “Maria, I’m proud of you, but before you do that, you have to get your life together. No more drugs, no more alcohol, no more casual sex, cut all of that out.” And it was hard, but I knew I had to make her proud, so I stopped hanging out with all my delinquent friends, dropped all the drugs, started going to church… got into Cumberland College on a kickass letter of recommendation from my teacher, and before I knew it I was an MD in my residency.” She took a moment to laugh to herself even briefly before staring down at the carcass of the cigarette under her boot. “But every once in a while… I have one of these guys.”

Erhard found himself staring as well at the cigarette, snuffed out on the ground. It didn’t emit any smoke, seemed kind of… powerless sitting there on the ground. “Why is that?”

Maria sighed. “More or less I guess it’s to remind myself of everything I stand to lose if I don’t work hard.” It made a lot of sense to Erhard, but he simply stood by her and nodded. Another silence, and Maria shoved her hands in her pockets, concentrating on the sky, now darkening. “Do you know the relapse rate of people who get addicted to more than one recreational drug?”

A raised eyebrow, and Erhard turned his head towards her. “The literature usually puts it at 40 to 60 percent, if I recall.”

Maria chuckled. “And this,” she kicked the cigarette lightly with her boot, fiddling with it as she spoke. “This little stick here was what started it. And the reason I got addicted to everything else was because I had no control over myself. And I do it only once or twice a month to remind myself that I still have control. One day I’ll be able to stop everything. But it’s only been twenty years since my mom died and my world was turned on its head. And until I’m good enough that I know for sure I won’t ever be part of that 40 to 60 percent, I’m gonna keep reminding myself that I can control it.” Dr. Torres found herself smiling.

Erhard’s lips quirked. Suddenly everything about Maria made sense, even though Dr. Muller could never say that he understood her, he did have a bit of a better idea. It seemed to make the sight of Maria when she glowed so brightly under the darkening sky so much more breathtaking. “…That honestly does make a lot of sense.” Erhard finally muttered, keeping his usual slightly awkward mumble. “It’s very moving to see that you can help yourself so profoundly.”

"Yeah, well," Maria murmured, finally leaving the cigarette butt alone on the ground. And after another pause, this time with both doctors looking directly at one another, Maria averted her eyes with a laugh and what Erhard hoped he didn’t mislabel as a slight blush on her cheeks. "It’s… not like me to pour my heart out like this." Maria murmured. "If you could just… not tell anyone. Nobody knows about this. Not even Tomoe, and she’s my best friend."

The former CR-S01 nodded. “You have my word.”

And a blush snaked across his own face when Maria kissed his cheek lightly and smiled. “Thanks,” she replied with a smile, before sliding her hands back into her pockets and somehow enticing Erhard to watch with intrigue as she left the breezeway, a tune whistling from her lips.


End file.
